Strait of Malacca

The 900 kilometer strait between Sumatra and Malaya through which roughly a quarter of world seaborne trade passes.

Overview

More than 90,000 vessels transit each year, several hundred a day, making this the busiest shipping chokepoint and the shortest route between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. It is the energy lifeline of China, Japan and Korea, whose oil imports mostly come through it, and the reason Singapore sits where it does. Control of the strait shaped history from Srivijaya and the Malacca sultanate to the Portuguese capture of 1511. Modern coordinated patrols by the littoral states suppressed the piracy that plagued the 2000s. A Thai canal is periodically proposed and never funded, the clearest sign of how hard the geography is to beat.